When Creepy Toys Attack...

Tonight's random YouTube video comes to the VoH courtesy of Wesley Cavins, an original Vault Dweller and long-time friend in horror...



Must admit, this kid has some excellent taste in reading material ;-)

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The Horror Comics Inquisition: Revisionist History?

In what is sure to be a fairly unpopular, if not inflammatory piece amongst lovers of horror-themed comic books (I'm talkin' to you, Karswell), The New Yorker has published a review of two new books on the subject of the 1950s Congressional hearings into the comics industry that challenges how the controversy has been viewed for the last half-century.

The review, by Louis Menand, though peppered with cultural snobbery in the grand New Yorker tradition, nevertheless is a fascinating read, which I was drawn to as a lover of both horror and comics. Was Dr. Francis Wertham, author of the infamous Seduction of the Innocent, not really the witch-hunter he's remembered to have been? Was William Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, more to blame for the collapse of his genre than anyone else? And was that collapse actually caused by factors completely unrelated to the 1954 hearings?

The two books being reviewed are David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America and Bart Beaty's Fredric Wertham And the Critique of Mass Culture. In his combined review, Menand jumps full-tilt into the 50-year-old fray, indicating, for example, that an amphetamine-fueled Gaines practically hanged himself in the witness stand with devastatingly ill-conceived testimony. He also points out that Wertham actually opposed the creation of the restrictive comics code that the industry imposed on itself, but rather favored something more akin to a ratings system.

In his appraisal of the two books, the reviewer takes a viewpoint which, while unpopular, is certainly worth a look for anyone interested in the subject. Particularly, he suggests that Gaines was not some first-amendment martyr, but rather a profiteer crafting entertainment for children that may not necessarily have been appropriate for them, especially in 1950s America. Menand points out comic industry insiders hired private investigators to try to dig up dirt on Wertham (below), who, in his words, "was not a philistine, [but] a progressive intellectual" who was anti-censorship but merely concerned with what he saw as racist, sexist and misogynistic representations in children's literature.

The decimation of the comic book industry is also, in Beaty's book, pinned more on the dissolution of chief distributor the American News Company in 1955 rather than the hearings of the previous year.

This is not a black and white issue, to be sure, and Menand also specifically makes mention of the Kangaroo-court atmosphere that characterized the hearings. But instead of simplifying the matter into a good-guy/bad-guy scenario, Menand and the two books he's reviewing take a closer, harder look into the situation than perhaps has ever been taken, pushing aside the mists of nostalgia that have prevailed in post-counterculture America.

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Marvel's Man-Thing Rises from the Swamp Once More...

When it comes to supernatural swamp creatures in comics, I've always been more of a fan of the sorely under-used Man-Thing, as opposed to his much more well-known counterpart over at DC. Created during the horror-comic renaissance of the 1970s along with other Marvel characters like Blade, Ghost Rider and Morbius, Man-Thing was a creepy, enigmatic figure that haunted the outer boundaries of my comic-collecting childhood. I never knew much about him because he never made many appearances, yet his image and nature were so striking that I snatched up whatever I could find (and yes, the title "Giant-Size Man-Thing" was just about the funniest thing my 11-year-old brain could imagine.)

Unfortunately, like many of the post-1960s Marvel characters, Man-Thing was just never quite popular enough to sustain his own series for any great length of time. Most recently, I recall a short-lived run a few years back that was quite good, written by J.M. DeMatteis, best known for the famous 1987 "Kraven's Last Hunt" Spider-Man storyline.

But now, Marvel has introduced a new take on the Man-Thing in a special four-part miniseries for it's mature-readers "MAX" line. It's called Dead of Night, taken from the title of a 1970s Marvel horror comic. Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the series retells the character's origin, with each of the four issues told in a different style of horror storytelling. The first one, which I picked up a few days ago, is a tip of the hat to the classic EC Comics in every way, even including its own Crypt Keeper-style "host" Digger--a character lifted from obscure 1969-1970 Marvel horror book Tower of Shadows.


According to an interview Aguirre-Sacasa gave to CBR News, the second issue will be told in the style of the 1960s-70s Warren magazines Eerie and Creepy; issue #3 will be in 1970s exploitation horror flick style; and the finale will unfold like James Cameron-esque '80s action-horror. The art is done by a different artist in each issue--the one I'm familiar with is issue #3's illustrator Javier Saltares, who did excellent work on the early 1990s Ghost Rider.

After reading issue #1, I highly recommend Dead of Night for anyone who loves horror comics. Marvel is doing a great job with a character that deserves more attention--or who at least deserves to be redeemed after that god-awful direct-to-SciFi-Channel movie adaptation of a couple years back. Just try not to be too afraid, because in case you forgot, "All who know fear burn at the Man-Thing's touch!"

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John Landis Enters the Crypt

There I was, feeling a little bummed out that Diary of the Dead is thus far getting only a limited release of 42 theaters nationwide--with the closest one to me being 35 miles away--when, lo and behold, this life-affirming news comes over the wire.
Variety reported last night that John Landis, best known to horror aficionados as the director of An American Werewolf in London, will be stepping in to helm the biopic "Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," based on the life of the famous EC Comics and Mad Magazine publisher.
As you probably have guessed, I am a big fan of EC Comics (that's my favorite Tales from the Crypt cover, by the way.) It all began back in the 1950s when my dad first discovered them as a kid. Fast-forward 30 years later, and he passed along the love for those gore-soaked pages to me, his only begotten son.
The picture is expected to focus on the rise of EC Comics in the '50s, and in particular the First Amendment battle that ensued when his horror comics were targeted by the U.S. Senate for their "harmful influence" on kids like my dad. As another life-long fan of EC and classic horror in general, I'm hoping for Landis to knock this one out of the park.
Now all I need is for Diary of the Dead to go wide next weekend...

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